84 deaths leave Sudan on the brink

LEADERS of the northern and southern Sudanese called for calm yesterday after a third day of clashes that have killed at least 84 people since the death of the vice-president, John Garang.

Police and army were trying to restore order to the streets of the capital, Khartoum, as Sudan edged dangerously back towards the civil war that Mr Garang, the former southern rebel leader, had helped to end.

The president, Omar al-Bashir, went on television to call for end to the violence, promising an investigation into the helicopter crash that killed Mr Garang, and vowing that the peace process will forge ahead to produce a power-sharing government of northerners and southerners.

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The United Nations agreed to help with an inquiry into the vice-president's death.

The Red Cross said 84 bodies had been reported at hospitals in Khartoum, but the death toll could be much higher, with more casualties yet to be counted in outlying areas. Sudanese Arabs, who come mainly from the north, were reported to be fleeing the southern town of Juba after a two-day rampage by southerners who burned Arab-owned shops and homes. At least 18 people were killed.

Mr Garang's widow, Rebecca, called for his supporters to halt any violence. "We have to carry on with the goals set by John Garang," she told reporters in New Site, the town in southern Sudan where her late husband's body is being kept ahead of his burial on Saturday. "If you want us to be strong, you have to be strong, too."

Mr Bashir echoed that call, saying "the delicate circumstances that surround the peace process require us to be vigilant ... to spare our nation any sedition and attempts to demolish what we have already built."

Mr Garang was sworn in as vice-president on 9 July in a government of national unity mandated to end decades of communal and religious violence between the north and the mainly Christian and animist south.

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